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Friday, May 2, 2014

All the Frills: Home Library

Over the past year or so I’ve been working at growing my collection of books. I’ve always had an inordinate amount of scholarly and academic volumes (a PhD will result in that), but my collection was lacking many of the great “literary classics”.

So I’ve been actively looking for interesting editions of selected titles to add to my bookshelves. As I engaged in this I realized that, in some instances, I was going to wind up with multiple copies of things (for example, I have a lovely, display edition of Shakespeare but also a more utilitarian set of the collected works and some individual editions of plays that I’ve thoroughly marked up and annotated and am unable to get rid of – so now I just have multiple editions). I was also lucky enough to find some amazing editions of classics scholarly works, like Fernand Braudel’s history of the Mediterranean in the age of Philip II. Here’s a peek into my expanding collection.

I stumbled across this awesome etymology website – which is perfect for me because I can only access the Oxford English Dictionary at work because the U of A library has a subscription and I can only access a limited number of Yale library resources as an alumnus.

I love all books, no matter what they look like, but pretty ones are best. Your home library is very impressive. I've always dreamed of having a room at home that I could just fill with beautiful old books... One day!xox,Cee

I love that you're collecting missing classics. I really would love to do that except I am trying to declutter, even books. But maybe one day soon I'll do it. Great link list - love that profane recipe site :)xo Mary Jo

Yours is the type of collection that I want for my future home library. What beautiful collector's editions you have! Also, I just saw that piece on exploding whales this morning; it's so interesting and something I'd never thought would happen.